Why Adele's Music May Soon Be Blocked from YouTube

posted by Bennett Smed
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2 years ago

Indie artists such as Adele and Animal Collective could be gone from YouTube in as little as a few days, according to YouTube’s head of content and business operations. Gone from YouTube? How does that work?

Well, the world’s largest video sharing service (Owned by Google) is launching a new subscription service later this summer where customers can pay a monthly fee that allows users to get ad free videos and music. Artists that don’t comply with the governing prices for their content will not only be blocked from the subscription site, but also from YouTube’s free site.

“This is the dumbest thing Google could do,” wrote Gizmodo’s Mario Aguilar. “YouTube is amazing precisely because it has been an easy way for content makers to share their latest creations. This is especially true for music … YouTube’s power has always been its extraordinary openness; once Google starts to wall off the service to the creators, the YouTube we all fell in love with will be dead.”

For the most part, record labels are complying with the prices that YouTube will be paying for their content, and as one YouTube representative said “We’re paying them fairly and consistently with the industry.”

For smaller indie labels however, some think that it is a raw deal and will hold out for a better one. Some labels have said that the offers were unfavorable, and non negotiable. In the meantime their content will not be available on YouTube unless promoted by a YouTube partner such as Vevo, which is bad news for fans of smaller indie artists.

The new YouTube service will reportedly be titled “YouTube Music Pass”.